Review of my Dell XPS 1530

Well I’ve had my Dell XPS 1530 for almost 2 months now so I thought it’s a good time to write down what I think of it.

Overall, I’m really happy with it. It’s lighter and faster than my old Inspirion 9400 which only lasted me 18 months before I killed it 🙁

Build Quality: The XPS has a brushed metallic look which looks and feels much more durable which I hope will make it last longer than the Inspirion, which I managed to eat away a lot of the cover with my acidic fingers.

Colour: I got the midnight blue which is MUCH darker than the blue in the pici, but a nice colour. I do miss the silver for the ability to print out clear stickers and put on my lappy. I’ll have to get some new stickers printed for these lappies.

USB: Only has 3 USB ports which I’m feeling after having so many on the Inspirion. I’m making good use of the ports on my external monitor.

Wireless: XPS has a separate wireless switch on the rights side which I’m finding annoying. I seem to bump it when transporting and switching my wireless off.

Media buttons: These are now behind the keyboard. I miss having them on the front of the lappy when I watch DVDs.

Size/Weight: Not missing the 17” screen too much. It’s smaller but it’s bright and sharp. The laptop is a good size for my lap, wouldn’t want to go any smaller. It’s much lighter than the 17” inspirion so I’m finding it much better when transporting on bus, planes etc. I don’t have sore shoulders at the end of the day.

Touchpad / fingerprint reader: HATE the fingerprint reader. It gathers dirt and is really hard to use. The touch pad is really hard to use..it seems to be quite rough and I find my finger gets caught and the mouse seems to jump around when i use it.

Install: First thing i did was reinstall everything. I don’t understand why you’d sell a laptop with 4 GB of ram and NOT sell it with 64bit vista? Also, you have to go on a fishing expedition to find all the 64bit drivers for this laptop…they aren’t under XPS1530 section in dell driver download.